Behind Closed Doors NEW ZEALAND ART FROM PRIVATE COLLECTIONS IN WELLINGTON CURATED BY CHRISTINA BARTON 4 JUNE—18 DECEMBER 2011 Behind Closed Doors: New Zealand Art from Private Collections in Wellington 01 We are what we collect. Collecting is a particularly human pastime. It can be distinguished from the more prosaic or perverse impulses to accumulate or hoard by the processes of selection and arrangement that accompany the activity. The decisions that bring a collection into being, help it grow and give it shape, are intimately tied to the tastes, values and proclivities of the individual collector who creates it. Because each collection is different, it tells us something unique about the subject who compiled it. No wonder, then, that collecting has been described as a ‘mirror of the self’. Yet collecting is also a shared activity, relying on classifications that pre-exist the subject and value systems to which they consciously or unconsciously subscribe. A collection takes shape over time through interactions and transactions amongst people. Telling stories about loved objects has the double purpose of assigning personal meaning to things whilst knitting individuals into a wider context. Collecting, then, is social and it is temporally and spatially specific; it is the means by which an individual negotiates their place within a larger scene, culture or country; how he or she makes sense of and marks the passage of time. Behind Closed Doors traffics between these two poles of self and society to present a selection of modern and contemporary New Zealand art drawn exclusively from private collections in Wellington. The exhibition brings together works that normally belong in the personal worlds constructed by their owners and places these in an institutional frame, where they have been arranged to offer insights into the nature of art in New Zealand as it has unfolded from 1946 to the present. The exhibition sets out to posit a reciprocal relation between the shared forces that grant value to certain artists and art forms and the private desires that propel their selection and acquisition. It weaves together the big-picture narratives of art history, through which we come to understand and codify artistic practice within the frame of national culture, with the smaller material histories that track how works of art come into being, where and when they are presented, and how and why they circulate. Limiting its selection to private collections in Wellington, Behind Closed Doors further particularises these processes to point to the specific dynamics that shape this city’s social, economic, cultural and political identity. These works are a telling complement to the public collections that are also housed here; their presentation now just one modest iteration drawn from a plentiful store of possibilities. We are very grateful to all involved for their willingness to allow their works to be seen; this is a unique opportunity to determine how private possessions grant and are granted collective meaning. This exhibition is dedicated to Peter McLeavey who has helped foster a love of New Zealand art that has shaped the cultural outlook of this city. Behind Closed Doors: New Zealand Art from Private Collections in Wellington 02 A REVOLVING SHOWCASE Every six weeks the works in this window space will change. Over the course of the exhibition visitors will have the opportunity to see works by Rita Angus and Simon Denny (June–July); Ronnie van Hout (July–August); Billy Apple (September); Francis Upritchard (October); and Daniel du Bern and Dane Mitchell (November–December). These have been selected as especially suited to this highly visible showcase, either because of their physical properties or their conceptual pertinence. This is the spot where the building opens to its surroundings; it seems the fitting place to extend, refresh and complicate the narratives that unravel in the Gallery’s interior. RITA ANGUS (1908–1970) Fish 1967–9 oil on canvas Private Collection, Wellington This painting is one of a series made after Rita Angus spent time sketching in the Napier Aquarium in 1967 on one of her frequent visits to her parents. With its deep blues and burnt shades of orange and its careful placement of fish and rocks in layered bands that neatly follow the perimeter of the picture, this vivid painting is more than an observational study. It operates on three further interconnected registers: as a personal emblem (Angus was a Pisces); as a symbol (representing a harmonious universe where every element seems in perfect balance) and, as a modernist manifesto (metaphorically alluding to painting’s higher claims to self-containment). Rita Angus is one of New Zealand’s most respected artists who won the attention of fellow artists, critics and curators, despite her fierce independence, which saw her refuse the overtures of dealer galleries and which kept New Zealand’s first professional art historians at arm’s length. This painting is similar to one in the national collection (Fish V, 1969), which was included in the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa’s major retrospective (Rita Angus: Life and Vision) that toured the country in 2008–09. SIMON DENNY (born 1982) Deep Sea Vaudeo 2009 video installation Private Collection, Wellington Catrin Lorch (writing in Frieze Magazine) describes Deep Sea Vaudeo as ‘a multi-layered farewell to the triangular relationship between performance, sculpture and media art—a relationship now overtaken by flat screens, computer monitors and online personas’. The work consists not only of the carefully made video we watch on the screen (which documents a recent installation Denny re-constructed in a German television studio), but also the ordinary cabinet and clunky monitor on which it is presented. Here Denny overlays his appreciation of the physical character of the television set as a closed box into which we look, with his interest inaquaria as hermetically sealed miniature marine environments designed to be viewed from the outside. He focuses on the materiality of a medium that strategically locates itself between television and film, object and image, installation and documentation, to suspend and historicise the turns art has taken in the face of rapid technological innovation. Simon Denny completed a BFA at the Elam School of Fine Arts in Auckland in 2004 before undertaking postgraduate study at the Städelschule in Frankfurt (2007–09). He is now living in Berlin. His works have been shown in New Zealand, Australia and more recently Europe. He is represented by Michael Lett in Auckland and Galerie Daniel Buchholz, Cologne. Behind Closed Doors: New Zealand Art from Private Collections in Wellington 03 RONNIE VAN HOUT (born 1962) Duck Character and Mouse Character 1999 mixed media Private Collection, Wellington Justin Paton calls Ronnie van Hout’s Duck Character and Mouse Character ‘one of his most spectacular homages to the skew-whiff’. Visitors may be struck by the familiarity of these figures, not just because they are wonky replicas of Walt Disney’s most famous inventions (Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse) but because they might have seen sculptures very like these in a playground on the waterfront at Picton (probably as they waited for the Interisland ferry). These are the more direct source for van Hout’s installation, and in relation to these originals they are remarkably good renditions, though the artist has added a ‘spicy’ video and soundtrack that turns both duck and mouse into lascivious onlookers. Though unlike anything else in Van Hout’s oeuvre, this work encapsulates the very best of what he is known for. Freely raiding from both high and low art sources, Van Hout exemplifies the postmodern plagiarist for whom there is nothing new in the world. And yet here he manages to convey a funny tenderness that not only honours the naive efforts of the unknown maker of Picton’s version of Disney’s characters, but he also invests Duck and Mouse with human traits that give the works life despite their obvious and far- from-perfect fabrication. There is something plangent and touching in this most awkward appropriation. BILLY APPLE (born 1935) From the Malcolm Brow Collection 1997 acrylic on canvas Private Collection, Wellington In 1988 Billy Apple produced his first From the Collection painting. This was for the Bank of New Zealand collection, which was then being compiled by Peter McLeavey especially for its sleek new headquarters in central Wellington. In the same year he also produced a canvas for Jenny and Alan Gibbs, two prominent Auckland collectors who emerged at that time as key patrons of the arts. Since then, Apple has worked with private, corporate and institutional collectors, providing works that rigidly adhere to his aesthetic framework (in terms of format, graphic design and wording) and yet which are always personalised according to the inclinations or identities of his patrons. Together this series is a fascinating tribute to the model of collaboration Apple has instigated as his modus operandi. Over time it is also evolving as a collective portrait of the art world in New Zealand. Billy Apple is a leading conceptual artist whose career has unfolded since the late 1950s in London, New York and New Zealand. International recognition for his singular contribution to the history of conceptual art was awarded in 2009 with a major two-part exhibition surveying the various dimensions of his practice staged in Rotterdam at the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, one of Europe’s leading galleries. Here curators Zoë Gray and Nicholaus Schafhausen paid tribute to his ‘direct approach to the commercialisation of his art’, acknowledging its timeliness in our era of remarkable art-market growth. Behind Closed Doors: New Zealand Art from Private Collections in Wellington 04 BILLY APPLE (born 1935) Lunches 2005 acrylic on canvas Private Collection, Wellington Hamish McKay, the individual with whom Billy Apple has transacted this work, will be well known to Wellingtonians as owner of a leading dealer gallery in the city, which in turn represents the artist.